In households having an infant or very young child wearing disposable diapers, a diaper pail is usually placed in the bathroom or nursery for the receipt and disposal of soiled diapers.
One prior art diaper pail is sold under the trademark “Diaper Genie”. Diaper pails of the “Diaper Genie”™ type are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,869,049 (Richards et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 5,590,512 (Richards et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 5,813,200 (Jacoby et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 6,128,890 (Firth) and U.S. Pat. No. 6,170,240 (Jacoby et al.).
The diaper pails shown in these patents generally comprise a container formed with an internal ring-shaped flange. A tubular core or cartridge rests on the flange and houses a continuous length of flexible, substantially non-resilient plastic tubing. A twist rim is rotatably coupled to the cartridge and a mechanism is provided to hold a diaper stationary when the twist rim rotates to twist the tubing above an end of the diaper to form a twisted closure. A cover is removably attached to the container and includes a lid.
In use, a soiled diaper is inserted into a waste insertion reservoir bounded by the tubing and the twist rim is then manually rotated as the diaper is held stationary to cause the diaper to be enclosed or encapsulated in the tubing by the formation of a twist in the tubing above the diaper. Rotation of the twist rim also causes an additional amount of tubing to be removed from the cartridge and be pushed into the waste insertion reservoir to prepare it for a subsequent insertion of a diaper. The subsequent insertion of another diaper into the waste insertion reservoir causes the previously enclosed diaper to pass into the hollow interior of the container. A series of connected, closed and encapsulated waste packages is created and the encapsulation process can be continued until the tubing is exhausted or the container is full.
In U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/138,058, problems with diaper pails of the Diaper Genie™ type are mentioned and innovative constructions of diaper pails are presented. Additional innovative constructions of diaper pails which also overcome problems with the conventional Diaper Genie™ type diaper pails are disclosed herein.